Introduction

In this and the following chapter we seek to understand the interviewees’ work histories in more depth. In Chapter 8 we examine the ‘supply side’ of the labour market – how personal issues and family circumstances, often rooted in wider social disadvantages, had an impact on people's engagement with work. In this chapter we are concerned with the ‘demand side’ of the ‘employability’ equation (Lindsay and McQuaid, 2005), or more precisely, how research participants experienced the sorts of employment that they did and what we can learn about the low-pay, no-pay cycle from their descriptions. We begin by noting the deindustrialisation of Teesside's labour market and how this has created a context where the jobs available to the research participants were now defined by their low pay, low skill and insecurity. The following section, introduced by three cases, examines in depth the experience of doing poor work. Reasons for leaving and losing jobs are then discussed. Despite the predominant experience being one of poor work, interviewees still found work to hold positive social and psychological benefits, the focus of the penultimate section. Finally, we briefly note the exceptional cases of individuals who had managed to locate better quality employment and escape the low-pay, no-pay cycle.

Teesside's deindustrialised labour market

Younger and older interviewees were aware of the dramatic changes that have affected Teesside's economy (see Chapter 3).